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MARY DUNLOP MACLEAN
Late Managing Editor of THE CRISIS

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The COLORED MAGAZINE IN AMERICA

The first colored magazine in America seems to have been THE African Methodist Episcopal Church Magazine, edited by Dr. Hogarth, general book steward, and published in Brooklyn, in October, 1841. The magazine was in a sense the ancestor of THE CRISIS. Its editor seems to have been a native of Haiti, although little is known of his life and work. The prospectus of the magazine says: "In embarking upon this laudable enterprise it becomes our duty, in the outset, to inform our friends that such a work cannot be concluded with dignity and honor to our people unless it meets with ample supply of pecuniary and intellectual means. A fear of failure in obtaining these important contingencies had, in a great measure, prevented our brethren in their deliberations from coming to any conclusions on this important subject. But, judging from the present aspect of things, that the times have greatly changed in our favor as a people, light has burst forth upon us, intelligence in a great measure is taking the place of ignorance, especially among the younger portions of our people, opening the avenues to proper Christian feeling and benevolence--our brethren, from those important considerations, came to the conclusion, at our last New York annual conference, held in June, in the city of Brooklyn, to order such a work and lay it before the public for their patronage." This magazine lasted two or three years. Its publication was then stopped.

After an interval of forty years Bishop B. T. Tanner began the publication of the A. M. E. Church Review Quarterly. This has been published as a quarterly magazine from 1885 down to to-day and is now receiving new life from its recently elected editor, Dr. R. C. Ransom. The first number of the Review says editorially: "My church, the African Methodist Episcopal, at its recent quadrennial session in Baltimore, concluded to have not only a weekly paper, but a Review, for the present quarterly, but intended to be bi-monthly, with the management of which it honored me. I have, therefore, gentlemen, to ask at your hands the same friendly consideration you so generously accorded me when editor of the Christian Recorder. Grant an exchange. Speak a word--when merited. What we present is unique in the world of letters. If you think so, advise the thoughtful of your readers to subscribe for it."

A quarterly magazine, however, did not quite fill the bill, and in the years from 1845 to the present there have been a number of other adventures. There was, for instance, The Repository of Religion and Literature, published in Indianapolis and afterward in Baltimore for several years. In later days the Colored American Magazine, started by a colored man who put the savings of his life from days' labor into it, was first issued in Boston in 1900, and rapidly attained a wide circulation. At its zenith it distributed 15,000 copies. Then, however, its troubles began. It was at one time sold for debt, but Colonel William H. Dupree rescued it, and it seemed about to take on a new life when further difficulties occurred. It was suggested to the editor, who was then Miss Pauline Hopkins, that her attitude was not conciliatory enough. As a white friend said: "If you are going to take up the wrongs of your race then you must depend for support absolutely upon your race. For the colored man to-day to attempt to stand up to fight would be like a canary bird fac icing a bulldog, and an angry one at that." The final result was that the magazine was bought by friends favorable to the conciliatory attitude, and transferred to New York, where it became so conciliatory, innocuous and uninteresting that it died a peaceful death almost unnoticed by the public.

Meantime, a firm of subscription-book printers, then known as the J. L. Nichols Company, conceived an idea suggested to it by one of its agents of publishing a colored magazine in the South. The Voice of the Negro appeared in January, 1904, and a young man then just out of college, Mr. J. Max Barber, was made its editor. The Voice of the Negro proved the greatest magazine which the colored people had had. It reached a circulation of 15,000, and at one time